Any Chance "New Life +" Will be back in 2020
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@BartzBB said in Any Chance "New Life +" Will be back in 2020:
@lighthawk96
Ain't it because of the speculation that the racist ideals of the author was incorporated into the series?For those that forgot or not in the know, the main reason why this series stopped publishing was that at the time of writing of this series (when it was still a WN) the author kept on posting racist things about China on twitter. After few years passed and when an anime adaptation was green lit some Chinese SJW actually took the time to review all of the authors old and I mean years old twitter post and somehow connected it to the setting of the MC. Wherein he hypothesizes that the MC was part of some war between Japan and China some years ago and he killed a lot of Chinese people. This is because the setting of the MC states that when he was still alive in Japan he was a killer who killed thousands of people.
Thanks to all this facts and coincidences the SJW guy slammed the author as a racist and it trended to the point that the Chinese companies who were part of the anime project were backing out followed by their Japanese partners and it became a huge scandal in the anime industry.
IMHO, I couldn't care less if the author is a racist or if he inserted some racist ideals on his work it's still the readers decision if he/she will take to heart the racism implied in the book. When I was reading the pre-pubs before I didn't even notice any racist thing in the story. Even after the incident I still couldn't pinpoint anything racist in the story. People only said it was racist because of the speculation of the MC's setting by the SJW dude based on some twitter posts by the author so many years ago.
which goes to prove that:
- the internet is forever: folks can dig up tweets/ FB posts, comments on JNC forums etc years after they are initially released into the wild.
- what you say/post can come back and 'bite you in the butt', maybe even years later.
I don't want to get into whether 'art can be separated from the artist', opinions vary. Regardless I would not be surprised if this never sees the light of day beyond what is already 'out there' . I don't believe that this title is important enough to the original publisher (or JNC for that matter) to put that much effort in continuing the project.
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@Jon-Mitchell even if we would not get any more of the series we would still ahve 15 more books. If I recall correctly there are 18 books released in Japan.
@Patrick-Grady You surely think about Nobuhiro Watsuki of Kenshin fame. He was arrested for child porn.
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@saskir said in Any Chance "New Life +" Will be back in 2020:
even if we would not get any more of the series we would still ahve 15 more books. If I recall correctly there are 18 books released in Japan.
but is the Japanese publisher motivated to license them? or maybe they feel it's better to not 'open this particular can of worms'? How important is this particular series to the publisher? perhaps they think that the profile would be too high (in not a good way) in perusing the revenue of licensing a translation and to instead focus on the author's new works?
how important is the project to JNC? there were 2 (?) volumes translated out of JNC's library of 450 +/-, JNC does not have infinite resources to assign translators/editors/etc. Would it sell well enough to justify trying to get it again? (even without the notoriety?) Does the benefit justify the cost?
I'm guessing that to the Japanese publisher, this series isn't 'big' enough to focus on. The anime deal is dead, to them there is such a thing as 'bad publicity'. They will focus on other projects. And this problematic series is now 'dead to them'. In which case JNC can't have it even if they wanted it.
I'm not discussing the 'justice' of this series being published or not, I found it entertaining enough, but not particularly groundbreaking or anything. It wasn't so different/great that I feel too much loss for it not to continue (so much great stuff has come out since) .
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@Jon-Mitchell There were 3 volumes translated by JNC, with the third pulled just days before its official release.
Pulling #3 after Amazon and others had been taking pre-purchase orders for it was problematic for JNC; apparently Sam decided to allow the pre-purchase orders to be filled as part of fixing up the relationship with Amazon. That's how I got my copy.
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@SomeOldGuy
2 vs. 3 translated volumes doesn't really change the calculus. It doesn't seem that (to the publishers/JNC) this series is important enough to fight for or over. I suspect it is a dead project. I predict that if someone were to FTL, the copyright holders wouldn't enforce it too hardI read banned books
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@SomeOldGuy Really? Because mine got canceled and was never reinstated or filled. I still have the cancelation email (I’m a little obsessive with financial records).
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@Jon-Mitchell The fan translator picked it back up again right after JNC dropped it, as they had dropped it because it was licenced.
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It's safe to assume the series was retired under the label of "on hold". No chapters of the web novel have been published since May 2018. Without new web novel chapters, there won't be more light novels.
As much as I enjoyed the series , I would be very surprised if it ever started up again. Take this a good lesson as to why you should never post stupid things on the internet.
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FWIW, the series is still listed under "suspended" on the Wikipedia page. That's more of an expression of optimism than any official status. As has been pointed out, there are 18 volumes published in Japan. Unfortunately, it would take a major change of heart by Hobby Japan to allow JNC to resume translation. I'm guardedly optimistic that translation will resume, but honestly, I'm thinking a Phrase attack (Smartphone reference) has a higher probability.
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Someone asked about licensing Mine's other work during the last J-NC Stream during the Q&A. The response honestly just sounds like he's done with Mine and I wouldn't get my hopes up for the series resuming translation.
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@Aruseus493 Understandable. This series brought much headache to Sam. Although I would like to see a continuation but the more time passes the more unlikely it will get.
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@bartzbb said in Any Chance "New Life +" Will be back in 2020:
@lighthawk96
Ain't it because of the speculation that the racist ideals of the author was incorporated into the series?For those that forgot or not in the know, the main reason why this series stopped publishing was that at the time of writing of this series (when it was still a WN) the author kept on posting racist things about China on twitter. After few years passed and when an anime adaptation was green lit some Chinese SJW actually took the time to review all of the authors old and I mean years old twitter post and somehow connected it to the setting of the MC. Wherein he hypothesizes that the MC was part of some war between Japan and China some years ago and he killed a lot of Chinese people. This is because the setting of the MC states that when he was still alive in Japan he was a killer who killed thousands of people.
Thanks to all this facts and coincidences the SJW guy slammed the author as a racist and it trended to the point that the Chinese companies who were part of the anime project were backing out followed by their Japanese partners and it became a huge scandal in the anime industry.
IMHO, I couldn't care less if the author is a racist or if he inserted some racist ideals on his work it's still the readers decision if he/she will take to heart the racism implied in the book. When I was reading the pre-pubs before I didn't even notice any racist thing in the story. Even after the incident I still couldn't pinpoint anything racist in the story. People only said it was racist because of the speculation of the MC's setting by the SJW dude based on some twitter posts by the author so many years ago.
Really? This is all it takes to destroy a popular series employing dozens of people, some ancient twitter posts and a very dubious and convoluted argument that maybe, possibly, if you squint really hard and look at it in just the right light, the enemy forces some soldier killed offscreen in a briefly mentioned war from his backstory could have possibly been implied to be Chinese?
Even if it was outright stated the fictional war was with China what does it even matter? It would be like banning and blacklisting anyone who has worked on any of a million different movies where the Soviets or Germans are the enemies.
Racists and bigots suck, but who cares what somebody does off the clock and years in the past? Even if the guy was some overt white-supremacist Qanon cultist, what does it even matter as far as publishing his work goes? I mean it would be one thing if the guy's books had some outright racist ideology they are peddling, but it doesn't even sound like this is remotely the case.
Edit: I just noticed how old this topic is. My bad on the necromancy.
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@melting-sky Yeah, bout that...
From Book 1:
See also: historical murder contests. It's really hard not to see the protagonist as taking part in the Rape of Nanking, especially when the dates match up too. Not exactly a great look when you're about to push the series hard with an anime and it's right when China is becoming a larger target market.
